"for the sake of humanity"… A small town American high school history project changes lives worldwide. These are the observations of a veteran teacher- on the Power of Teaching, the importance of the study of History, and especially the lessons we must learn, and teach, on the Holocaust. Click on "Holocaust Survivors, Liberators Reunited" tab above to begin.

2010~The Year of the Liberator~Mid April 1945: First American reports to folks back home.

{As part of the conclusion to my USHMM Teacher Fellowship project, I am posting the unfolding nature of the discovery of the camps as Allied troops closed in from the East and the West, sixty-five years to the day that the discovery/event occurred.}

April 15, 1945: Soviet forces are 35 miles east of Berlin and 60 miles east of Dresden, Germany. British troops close on Bremen and Hamburg, Germany.

April 15, 1945: At Ravensbrück and Sachsenhausen, Germany, 57,000 inmates–17,000 of them women–are marched westward by the SS. Once under way, many will be shot and/or die of exhaustion, and others, including 21-year-old Mila Racine, will be killed during Allied bomb attacks aimed at nearby targets.

April 15-17, 1945: A small contingent of British troops at the Bergen-Belsen, Germany, camp is unable to prevent Hungarian SS guards from murdering 72 Jewish and 11 non-Jewish prisoners.

April 16, 1945: The Red Army launches its final assault on Berlin.

April 18, 1945: Nazis initiate a death march of prisoners from Schwarzheide, Germany, to Theresienstadt, Czechoslovakia.